Painting Statement

New Artist Statement

These days I think of my paintings as chapters in a larger project. I’m trying to create a sense of the light and forms of certain powerful places and the dynamics of energy I find there. That’s one part of my purpose. The other part is to engage in a process which is improvisational and expressionistic. The tension and balance between these aspects of my purpose seem to me to be what the paintings are about.

Over the years I’ve made many drawings, studies and finished paintings, en plein air (outdoors), of a range of recurring motifs from the south end of San Juan Island. This entails looking at things that are at relative distances to each other, then shifting focus to the work at hand. The subject and the object. A holistic occupation, utterly absorbing.

Now I’m spending more time painting in the studio than in the field. Memory and imagination. Equally absorbing. Ultimately, it’s still a kind of homage to the primal elements— to the earth, water and sky that we see around us, and to the Sun’s light that reveals it all

Paintings by Daniel Finn • All Paintings • All Artists